to purchase mules, to the end that we might
journey in more dignity and comfort. It was then about the twentieth
hour, and I hoped to return by nightfall. I took my leave of Madonna,
enjoining her to rest and to seek sleep whilst I was absent; and with
that I set out.

Cattolica was no more than a half-league distant, and I looked to reach
it in a half-hour or so. I fell into thought as I trudged along, and I
was building plans for the sunlit future that was to be ours. I was a
man transformed that day, and I could have sung in spite of the chill
December wind that buffeted me, so full of joy and gladness was my
heart.

At Biancomonte I was likely to spend my days as little better than a
peasant, but surely a peasant's estate with such a companion as was to
be mine was preferable to an emperor's throne without her.

The bleak landscape seemed to me invested with a beauty that at no other
time I should have noticed. God was good. I swore a thousand times, the
world was a good world--so good that Heaven could scarce be better.

I had come, perhaps, the better half of the distance I had to travel,
and I was giving full rein to my joyous fancy, when suddenly I espied
ahead a company of horsemen. They were approaching me at a brisk
pace, but I took no thought of them, accounting myself secure from any
molestation. If it so happened that it was a search party from Pesaro,
seeking two men disguised as monks who had ravished the coffin
of Madonna Paola di Santafior, what should they want of Lazzaro
Biancomonte? And so, in my confidence, I advanced even as they trotted
quickly towards me.

Not until they were within a matter of a hundred paces did I raise my
eyes to take their measure; and then I halted on my step, smitten of a
sudden by an unreasoning and unreasonable fear, to see at their head
the bulky form of the Governor of Cesena. He saw me, too, and, what
was worse, he recognised me on the instant, for he clapped spurs to his
horse and came at me as if he would ride me down. Within three paces of
me he drew up his steed. Whether the memory of the other two occasions
on which I had thwarted him arose now in his mind and made him wonder
had not some fatality brought me across his path again to send awry his
pretty schemes concerning Madonna Paula, I cannot say for certain; yet
some suspicion of it occurred to me and filled me with apprehension.

"Body of Bacchus!" he roared. "Is it truly you, Boccadoro?"

"They cal